Posted July 16, 201311 yr http://www.nateshivar.com/1451/how-other-people-stereotype-your-city/ The question was: "Why is (place) so... " and this is what popped up for Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus. Cincinnati ...so conservative ...so racist ...so boring ...so humid Cleveland ...so bad ...so dangerous ...so cloudy ...so depressing Columbus ...so famous ...so gay ...so important ...so well known I can see some of those stereotypes for Cleveland/Cincinnati because they've been around so long, unfortunately. I really don't get Columbus' though, besides the gay thing. I've always thought Columbus was basically not that known nationally, and the last words I would think of for a stereotype for it are "famous" and "well known". I have long though of it as under everyone's radar, except in Ohio where it's mostly looked down on. I suspect it has to do with sharing a name with Christopher Columbus, rather than anything people think of about the city. The gay thing, though, definitely. If I specify Columbus, Ohio, the results are: ...a test market ...Ohio's state capital ...famous ...called Columbus Some other Midwest examples. Chicago ...so corrupt ...so windy ...so cold ...so violent Detroit ...so bad ...so poor ...so black ...so dangerous Minneapolis ...so great ...so cold ...so expensive ...so gay St. Louis ...so empty ...so bad ...so ghetto ...so dangerous Kansas City ...so dangerous ...so boring ...so humid ...so... Indianapolis ...sobro (after the SoBro Café) Nothing else at all came up for the city. Milwaukee ...so poor ...so ghetto ...so cold ...so segregated Is it just me, or does the Midwest have a lot of negative stereotypes? The state of Ohio gets this result here: http://blog.noupsi.de/post/28896819324/why-are-americans-so ...so important ...so boring ...so important in the primaries
July 16, 201311 yr The results for Columbus are skewed by Christopher Columbus. Besides the gay one. Yep, that's what I thought, so I did the search myself and a lot of the links go to that.
July 16, 201311 yr If you just change the structure of the sentence, you get different results, obviously. If you leave it as "Why is (place), Ohio"... it turns out much differently. Cincinnati, the one result was "...called the Queen City" For Cleveland, it's "...important" and still "...so dangerous" Dayton is "...called the gem city" and "...the gem city". Toledo is "called the glass city" and "...in Ohio". Akron is "called the zips", "...the rubber city" and "...the zips". Youngstown is "...famous"
July 16, 201311 yr ^He specified that he did that intentionally in the second post to see what happens when you just say "why is C_______..." versus "why is C__________ so....".
July 17, 201311 yr ^ You're missing the "so" part. Most of the cities didn't have anything come up using "so" with "Ohio", so I left the so off.
July 18, 201311 yr Do the Midwest cities have exclusive claim to the negative connotations or do other cities on the coasts or in the south have them as well? What's the context? "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
July 18, 201311 yr Click the link in the original post and you'll see the same results for the top 50 metro area core cities. Most include some bad terms.
July 18, 201311 yr I think in this type of survey, the cities which are percieved to be the bigger cities are going to get those negative assumptions
July 18, 201311 yr I think in this type of survey, the cities which are percieved to be the bigger cities are going to get those negative assumptions I don't really see any correlation between metro size and negative stereotypes. Most of the cities have at least one negative response, from 50 down to 2. Only a handful of cities seem to not have any negative responses (NYC, Austin, maybe Minneapolis).
July 18, 201311 yr Well, I wasn't talking about actual metro size, which us UOers know all too well. I'm talking about perception. Cities that are percieved to be large, urban cities (whether they really are or not) are seen by much of America as dangerous, ghetto, etc. Cities like NYC, LA, SF, etc. have mystiques which override those connotations, of course. And when I say "urban", I don't necessarily mean urban in the sense we would use it here on this site. Just speculation from looking at the results.
July 18, 201311 yr ^That's the work of people who want to justify their long commutes and try to make their kids feel better about having to get on the school bus at 5:30 in the morning for a 1 1/2 hour bus ride each way.
July 21, 201311 yr http://www.nateshivar.com/1451/how-other-people-stereotype-your-city/ The question was: "Why is (place) so... " and this is what popped up for Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus. Cincinnati ...so conservative ...so racist ...so boring ...so humid Cleveland ...so bad ...so dangerous ...so cloudy ...so depressing Columbus ...so famous ...so gay ...so important ...so well known I can see some of those stereotypes for Cleveland/Cincinnati because they've been around so long, unfortunately. I really don't get Columbus' though, besides the gay thing. I've always thought Columbus was basically not that known nationally, and the last words I would think of for a stereotype for it are "famous" and "well known". I have long though of it as under everyone's radar, except in Ohio where it's mostly looked down on. I suspect it has to do with sharing a name with Christopher Columbus, rather than anything people think of about the city. The gay thing, though, definitely. If I specify Columbus, Ohio, the results are: ...a test market ...Ohio's state capital ...famous ...called Columbus Some other Midwest examples. Detroit ...so black Is it just me, or does the Midwest have a lot of negative stereotypes? The state of Ohio gets this result here: http://blog.noupsi.de/post/28896819324/why-are-americans-so ...so important ...so boring ...so important in the primaries I hate the Detroit one "why is Detroit so black?"
July 21, 201311 yr This is kind of addicting. Maybe someone with some GIS skills could put some maps together. Here are some more place name search results for comparison. Why is Ohio so important boring humid awesome Why is Indiana so boring conservative racist humid Why is Illinois so liberal humid corrupt flat Why is Missouri so humid hot conservative awesome Why is California so liberal broke polluted big Why is Florida so crazy hot weird Why is Kentucky so boring Republican racist poor Why is Kansas so hot good at basketball backward flat Why is New Jersey so hated expensive depressing corrupt Why is West Virginia so bad weird racist poor Why is Canada so nice lame expensive liberal Why is France so gay weak socialist secular Why is Russia so big poor crazy homophobic
July 21, 201311 yr This is kind of addicting. Maybe someone with some GIS skills could put some maps together. Here are some more place name search results for comparison. Why is Ohio so important boring humid awesome Why is Indiana so boring conservative racist humid Why is Illinois so liberal humid corrupt flat Why is Missouri so humid hot conservative awesome Why is California so liberal broke polluted big Why is Florida so crazy hot weird Why is Kentucky so boring Republican racist poor Why is Kansas so hot good at basketball backward flat Why is New Jersey so hated expensive depressing corrupt Why is West Virginia so bad weird racist poor Why is Canada so nice lame expensive liberal Why is France so gay weak socialist secular Why is Russia so big poor crazy homophobic So it seems like the entire Midwest is humid.
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